For These Gurugram Students, It Was Halloween With a Swachh Bharat Twist This Year!

Under the aegis of a city-based group named Zikr, students from Gurgaon gathered at the market on Sunday to take part in a special cleanliness drive – one where every volunteer was in costume for Halloween!

Having roots that date back to almost 2000 years ago, Halloween originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts.

It was believed that each year on 31st October, the dead returned as ghosts. Over the years, Halloween changed and has been adapted to make it a fun family event.

In India, Halloween has gained popularity among millennials who celebrate the day by dressing up as various superheroes and scary vampires.

Representational imagePhoto Source: Flickr

The residents of Gurugram also came out in large numbers to celebrate the day – but with a key difference. Armed with brooms and garbage bags, a group of students of DPS, Gurgaon came together to clean up a market area.

Under the aegis of a city-based group named Zikr, students from Gurgaon gathered at the market on Sunday to take part in a special cleanliness drive – one where every volunteer was in costume for Halloween!

Rahul Mahajan, the co-founder of the group and a student in DPS, Sector 45, said, “We have been doing these cleanliness drives for about a year now. And we try to take up spots that need cleaning regularly. Since this drive happened to coincide with the Halloween weekend, we decided to add colour to it by wearing some costumes,” as reported in the Times of India.

Along with cleanup, the volunteers also spoke to locals about the role cleanliness plays in our life and why they should not throw waste on the road.

Representational imagePhoto Source: Wikimedia Commons

They also encouraged local shopkeepers to keep dustbins outside their shop, as reported in Swachhindia.